This invention relates to the manufacture and packaging of pouches of particulate material. The invention is particularly applicable to the pouching of granulated material, such as dry soft drink material, but the invention is also applicable to the pouching of a wide variety of products including dry soups. The invention is particularly directed to producing a uniform distribution of the product within the pouch.
On a pouch machine that fills, for example, 500 pouches per minute, a continuous web of paper/poly is longitudinally folded upon itself and transversely sealed to form pouches. The web is passed about a filler wheel where the pouch walls are bowed outwardly toward a cylindrical condition to enable material to flow smoothly into each pouch. As the web comes off the filler, it is passed through a top sealer that forms a longitudinal seal at the top of the web, thereby closing each pouch.
The nature of the process produces pouches that tend to have more product in the bottom of the pouch than in the top.
The thus formed pouches are cut from the web and are shingled into groups of a predetermined number, the shingled groups of pouches being deposited on the upper runs of conveyor belts. The conveyor belts deliver the shingled pouches in the form of a stack to the product bucket of a cartoning machine. See U.S. Pat. No. 4,043,442. In a cartoner, a barrel loader thrusts the stack of pouches transversely from the product bucket into a carton which is thereafter sealed.
The problem focuses on the use of automatic machinery throughout the process of forming, filling, sealing the pouches, delivering the stack of pouches to a cartoner and thereafter cartoning the pouches. When a stack of pouches is, for example, four to eight pouches high, the fact that the product is primarily or entirely in the bottom half of each pouch produces an instability in the stack. One side of the stack becomes so much higher than the other side of the stack that the stack starts to slide or actually tips over.
Present solutions to the problem involve hand-packing the pouches into cartons or tamping the product in some manner to avoid a slipping or tipping of the stack.